The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

He thought about Drum for a moment and shook his head. “No.”


“Nor I.” She took a quick breath and exhaled sharply. “Let’s start over. Let’s make a new home.”

He studied her face, appreciating the straightforward, uncomplicated way it revealed her. With Troon, there was never any question about what she was feeling. Certainly, there wasn’t any question there. She was in love with him. She had told him that night on the flit. She had told him any number of times since. The revelation had surprised him, but pleased him, too. Eventually, while they recovered from their wounds, he realized he was in love with her, too.

She reached out for his hands and took them in her own. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you. But I don’t want to do it in a place that reminds me of the past. I want to do it where we can start over again and leave behind what we’ve known. Do you love me enough to do that?”

He smiled. “You know I do.”

They smiled at each other across the table, sharing feelings that shouldn’t be put into words because words would only get in the way.


They set the Bremen down in the gardens that fronted the bridge to the island of the tanequil, anchoring her well back, but safely within walking distance. Stridegate’s ruins were empty and still on an afternoon filled with sunshine and blue sky. They had flown into the Inkrim that morning, sailing out of night’s departing darkness into dawn’s bright promise, the boy and she standing together at the bow and looking down at the world. They had not spoken a word, lost in their separate thoughts. She thought she could probably guess at his but that he could not possibly know hers.

The Urdas were not in evidence on that visit, but Kermadec and his Trolls kept careful watch for them, even after they were anchored and on the ground. Urdas would not enter the ruins, it was said. They would not come into any place they considered sacred. Kermadec was taking no chances, and sent scouts in all directions with instructions to make sure.

Grianne turned to him. “Keep watch for us, Old Bear,” she said with a smile. “This won’t take long.”

He shook his great, impassive face in disagreement. “I wish you would let this wait for a while longer, Mistress. You have been through too much already. If there is a confrontation down there—”

“There will be no confrontation,” she said quickly, putting a reassuring hand on his armored wrist. She glanced over to where Penderrin stood at the bridgehead, looking over at the island. “This isn’t to be an encounter of that sort.”

She took her hand away. “You were the best of them all,” she told him. “No one was more faithful or gave more to me when it was needed. I will never forget that.”

He looked away. “You should go now, so that you can be back before dark.” There was resignation in his eyes. He knew. “Go, Mistress.”

She nodded and turned away, walking over to join the boy. He glanced at her as she came up beside him, but said nothing. “Are you ready?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. What if the tanequil won’t let us cross?”

“Why don’t we see?”

She walked out onto the bridge, the boy following, and called up the magic of the wishsong, humming softly to let it build, working on the message she wanted it to convey. She stopped perhaps a quarter of the way across until she had it just right, then released the magic into the afternoon silence and let it drift downward into the ravine. She gave it the whole of what she thought was needed, taking her time, content to be patient if patience was what was required.

It was not. A response came almost immediately, a shifting of heavy roots within the earth, a rustle of leaves and grasses, a whisper of wind. Voices, soft and lilting, that only she could hear. She understood what it meant.

“Come, Pen,” she said.

They crossed untroubled to the other side of the bridge and walked to the trail that had led the boy into the ravine weeks earlier in his search for Cinnaminson. The island forest was deep and still, the air cooler, the light diffuse, and the earth dappled with layered shadows. She watched Pen cast about, eyes shifting left and right, searching. He was looking for the aeriads, but she already knew they would not come. Nothing would come to them now. Everything was waiting.

They found the trailhead and stopped. The path wound downward in a steep descent that gradually faded into a mix of mist and shadows. It was so dark within the ravine that they could not see the bottom. It was the sort of place she had entered many times. It was a mirror of her heart.

She turned to him. “You are to wait here for me, Pen. I will do this best if I am alone. I know what is needed. I will bring Cinnaminson back to you.”